Quelab is Albuquerque’s hackerspace. Our mission is to foster and sustain an environment that promotes creativity, invention, and collaboration at the intersections of science, culture, art and technology. We support people inventing, learning, tinkering, and conducting citizen science.

We host two open nights a week where we open our doors to the public for tours and tinkering, held on Sundays and Tuesdays from 7:00pm – 10:00pm. (like an open house, but more hands-on)

This coming Saturday, we’re having an Arduino class! Some people don’t have an arduino though and didn’t order a kit with their ticket (or found out about it late.) For those of us who are willing to throw some money at the problem, here’s a few options! These are all available with Amazon’s 2-day prime shipping. You can get overnight shipping and, if you’re super desperate some have same-day shipping.

There are also a few discounted tickets left for folks bringing their own Arduinos. If we haven’t sold out of those tickets before the class those will be available at the door, but if you want to ensure your place in class the best way to do that is to buy a ticket via eventbrite.

We’re getting together an order of stuff from Adafruit and Sparkfun (both of which are space affiliates) and if you’d like to help support Quelab while getting Nifty Stuff, check out their stores, grab the price and item number, and then open up the Public Drive and let us know what you want in the Group Buy spreadsheets (there will be one for each order).

We’ll be closing orders at Midnight on 23 Feburary (23:59), and start collating the order. Since Adafruit doesn’t do backorders, we’ll reach out if the item(s) you want aren’t available. If we get an order of at least $300 for each order, we get free shipping and Quelab gets a cut of the price.

Quelab is delighted to announce we will be participating in Discover STEM day at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History Saturday! Come on down and see us February 7, from 10 am to 3 pm. Participation fees for the event are included in museum admission, and the museum itself is open from 9 am to 5 pm.

We will be bringing a 3-D printer, one of our members is bringing a 3-D scanner app they have created, and there will have some nifty things made on our laser cutter as well. We will plenty of other fun stuff and a few surprises too!

Last time I visited the museum I was really impressed by the breadth of their exhibits. I know this is STEM day, but if you have someone in your group who prefers history they will have plenty to keep them busy!

Generally, we hold our General Meeting on the first Sunday of the month. Some of you might be aware that there is a popular gridiron sports event being televised on this day in February. Traditionally this has not caused any changes in Quelab’s schedule, but we are trying something different, both out of sensitivity to the needs of our members who are part of the sportsball community and to those members who have alternative celebrations scheduled.

February’s General Meeting is being held one week later, on Sunday the 8th. Safety training will be discussed at this meeting, so we’d like as many people to be able to attend as possible. Quelab members and interested non-members are all welcome to attend. Please come!

Pre-meeting potluck and socializing starts at 4 PM, and the meeting will start at 5:05 PM. See you then!

First of all, I’d like to give a big “Thank You” to every member who attended or sent in a proxy ballot!

The results of last night’s elections for the Quelab Board of Directors are in!

New board members Jezzri Cochrane and Lissa Knudsen join returning board members Adric Menning and Geoff Nicholson. They join Addie Fryweaver, Cameron Goble, and Charel Morris in making up our board.

Congratulations new board members, and thank you all board members for your work on the betterment and continuation of Quelab. If you have any questions or problems on anything they can help with please contact one or more of them.

For anyone else who would like to be of service to Quelab, we always have room for more volunteers!

The coming February potluck and general meeting will be delayed to the second Sunday of the month, in order to prevent a conflict with a major national sporting event whose name is copyrighted but is compared frequently to a Superb Owl.

We’re also moving the start time for the potluck back to 4PM to give folks more time to socialize before the meeting, so the meeting itself can properly and promptly start at 5:05PM. So please join us on 8 Feburary 2015!

Quelab has held the first of our two Build Nights with MakeyMakey! We got people introduced to the MakeyMakey unit, learned how to hook them up, and about how the 11 keyboard inputs and 6 mouse inputs could be used.

Next week on Wednesday January 28th from 7pm-9pm Quelab is having another build night so bring your ideas and things to try!

On Sunday morning in January 2015, a member’s project finally took flight from Quelab, and caused a bit of a stir. Gonner was test-flying his solar balloon, and it managed to get away from him. The tetrahedral contraption (known as a Tetroon) broke free and floated free in the skies above Albuquerque, prompting local residents and a news-team to call the United States Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. KOAT-7 (ABC) came by to interview the creator, and put the story on the 5pm and 10pm news on 18 January. Click here for the News coverage (apparently, the 10pm coverage included a leader about UFOs in Albuquerque over the years).

Click through for photos, videos, and more history about the Tetroon projects!